Hicks: Stephen Colbert's sister to run for Congress

Stephen Colbert pretended to run for president. Now his sister is going to run for Congress ... for real.

Elizabeth Colbert-Busch has informed South Carolina Democratic Party executive director Amanda Loveday that she will file Tuesday to run in the special election for appointed Sen. Tim Scott's (R-S.C.) old House seat, Loveday told the Washington Post.

Colbert-Busch has worked in recent years at Clemson University, and has quite the life story already, according to this 2010 profile in the Charleston Post and Courier:

Her father and two of her brothers were killed in a plane crash when she was 19. She was married to a man who ended up on "America's Most Wanted." And in 2001, while at a business conference in New York City, she was sitting in a building directly across the street from the World Trade Center when two jetliners slammed into its twin towers.

Oh ... and she has this other brother who has a little TV show.

According to the Post, as director of business development for Clemson University's Restoration Institute, Colbert-Busch is, for lack of a better term, the school's corporate matchmaker. She finds companies that could benefit from the kind of advanced environmentally conscious research the university is doing -- wind turbine testing, water studies, different kinds of renewable energy -- and partners with them. More to the point, she asks them for money. In return, the corporations get the kind of cutting-edge information to help them stay one step ahead of the competition.

Advertisement

So she's used to asking for money. She's totally ready for this politics thing.

Colbert-Busch will very likely be an underdog against basically any Republican she would face for the seat. Scott's district went just 40 percent for President Obama this year.

ROBERT WAGNER NOT TALKING: Robert Wagner seems to be avoiding detectives who have reopened the investigation into the drowning death of his wife Natalie Woods more than 30 years ago.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Lt. John Corina said Thursday the actor has not consented to an interview in the renewed inquiry, and that detectives have interviewed more than 100 people in the re-investigation of Wood's 1981 death in the water off Catalina Island. Many of them hadn't been previously interviewed by investigators.

According to the associated Press, Corina said multiple attempts to interview Wagner have been rebuffed or gone unanswered. He says detectives even traveled to Colorado at one point to try to interview him.

Maybe he was at the gym. Actors are always going to the gym.

An attorney for Wagner and his family said they have cooperated with authorities over the last 30 years and have nothing new to add to the investigation.

Detectives began reinvestigating Wood's death in November 2011. A review by coroner's officials resulted in Wood's cause of death being changed to "drowning and other undetermined factors." Wood was in a boat with Wagner and actor Christopher Walken the night she died.

'DJANGO UNCHAINED' DOLLS GET SHUT DOWN: The "Django Unchained" action figures have been officially discontinued after several African American groups called for a boycott of the dolls, according to TMZ.

Sources connected to the toy production told TMZ that shortly after advocacy groups like Al Sharpton's National Action Network and Project Islamic Hope spoke out against the figurines, "Django" producers from the Weinstein Company asked the company to stop producing the figures.

The company halted production immediately. TMZ said only about 1,000 dolls were shipped.

That sound you're hearing are the cars of toy collectors, speeding to the nearest mall.

MICHAEL JACKSON'S DERMATOLOGIST IS TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING: We haven't heard much from the world of the late Michael Jackson lately and, frankly, we were getting a little worried that they all went off and got real jobs or something.

Negative. Jackson's former dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, put himself back on the pop culture map this week, hinting that he's the biological father of Jackson's 15-year-old son, Prince Michael.

Though Michael Jackson claimed he fathered all three of his children, there have always been rumors that he used a sperm donor. TMZ reported that Klein posted a "cryptic photo" on his Facebook page on Jan. 17, showing a side-by-side comparison of Prince Michael and Klein when he was younger, and wrote "hmmmmm."

And -- just to be fair -- the resemblance is pretty remarkable.

So, in other words, perhaps Arnold Klein is suggesting that he's really a woman and gave birth to Michael Jackson's child.

"To the best of my knowledge, I am not the father of these children. I can't answer it in any other way. I don't want to feed any of this insanity that is going around."

To the best of his knowledge? What ... did a bunch of his sperm go missing?

Klein was rumored to have fathered Jackson's eldest son and his daughter Paris, because Jackson met his ex-wife Debbie Rowe (who would give birth to his two oldest children) when she worked for Klein at his office.

The paternity of Jackson's youngest child Blanket has also been a mystery, as he was born by an anonymous surrogate in 2002, and in April 2012 the singer's former bodyguard Matt Fiddes publicly announced that he was the boy's biological father, but his claims have not been confirmed.

Saturday is Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2013. There are 346 days left in the year.

1861: Georgia became the fifth state to secede from the Union.

1937: Millionaire Howard Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.

1942: During World War II, Japan invaded Burma (Myanmar).

1953: CBS-TV aired the widely watched episode of "I Love Lucy" in which Lucy Ricardo, played by Lucille Ball, gave birth to Little Ricky. (By coincidence, Ball gave birth the same day to her son, Desi Arnaz Jr.) In 1955, a presidential news conference was filmed for television for the first time, with the permission of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1960: The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States of America was signed by both countries in Washington, D.C.

1966: Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister of India.

1970: President Richard M. Nixon nominated G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court; however, the nomination was defeated because of controversy over Carswell's past racial views.

1977: In one of his last acts of office, President Gerald R. Ford pardoned Iva Toguri D'Aquino, an American convicted of treason for making wartime broadcasts for Japan.

1981: The United States and Iran signed an accord paving the way for the release of 52 Americans held hostage for more than 14 months.

1992: German government and Jewish officials dedicated a Holocaust memorial at the villa on the outskirts of Berlin where the notorious Wannsee Conference had taken place.

2003: President Fidel Castro and millions of other Cubans voted in parliamentary elections where all 609 candidates ran uncontested. The Oakland Raiders won the AFC title game, beating the Tennessee Titans 41-24. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers took the NFC Championship game, defeating the Philadelphia Eagles 27-10. At the Golden Globe Awards, "Chicago" won best musical-comedy and "The Hours" claimed best drama.

2012: Six U.S. Marines were killed in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan. Texas Gov. Rick Perry abruptly quit the Republican presidential race. One of the world's most popular file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, was shut down as its founder and several company officials were accused of facilitating millions of illegal downloads of films, music and other content. Rupert Murdoch's media empire apologized and agreed to cash payouts to 37 people who had been harassed and phone-hacked by its tabloid press.